We walk around at night and are consumed by fire
As Behemot closes, what do we lose with it?
I’m not entirely sure when I first walked into Behemot as it wasn’t a particularly pleasing experience. The bookshop was smaller than the room I was living in at the time and you couldn’t help but feel watched by the staff as you tried to navigate around different sections of the room—film, art, fiction, philosophy, I always did it in that order. It didn’t take long to get adjusted and realize how special this place was—the staff was incredibly nice, they would order any book for you for a very reasonable price, there was always great music playing and most importantly—the place was stocked with a really thoughtful collection of english books.
After the introductory awkwardness it became the go-to place to order new books. I would never think of ordering a book from anywhere else. Why would I? But it wasn’t entirely about books. When bands came to play in Ljubljana, I’d take them to Behemot to get a book and Bi-ko-fe to get coffee. When someone hosted Couchsurfers, I’d take them to Behemot. It became one of those oases that inspired hope that business could indeed be done fairly. People were generally excited about its fragile existence.
Most importantly, there were humans that worked in Behemot. Real people who were also attracted by the mystique of the shop, by its candor of being small and honest in its own way. I remember getting excited by ordering a book and then waiting for the email that would announce its arrival and after work I would walk over there and pick it up. I would look over the shelf where they had other arrivals from people who I imagined were as excited as I was. It was great to see what other people read, sometimes even a bit scary. Then there were the micro-interactions with the people who worked there, always special in their own way, enchanting, weird and always incredibly helpful.
Some guy at some talk (too boring to even Google him) said that web commerce experiences are going to become more and more like small shops used to be. Instead of Dean having an idea of what kind of books I enjoy, Amazon naturally has way more data on what I like than he does. I’m a geek and it’s easy to get excited about things like that but having experienced the magic of Behemot, I tend to get all emotional about this. There are human relationships that could be formed but never will be because serendipity isn’t at all possible on Goodreads or some other Amazon-owned website. No matter how many algorithms a lonely overpaid engineer slaps together. And I can’t think of situations where these could otherwise occur.
Where we gain convenience, we stand to lose community.
Shops like Behemot to me, while still being just shops are based on the romantic notion of human relationships first, fiscal sense second. And while this is crazy and makes little business sense in the eyes of people who might read this, I naively believe it’s the only thing that makes sense doing in this day and age.
Behemot is now closing on the 14th of January. Read Dean’s thoughts about it on his site.
